Since the kindling of the conflict inside Syria in 2011, it
was recognized, by friend and foe alike, that the events in that country
were tied to a game plan that ultimately targets Iran, Syria’s number
one ally. [1] De-linking Syria from Iran and unhinging the Resistance
Bloc that Damascus and Tehran have formed has been one of the objectives
of the foreign-supported anti-government militias inside Syria. Such a
schism between Damascus and Tehran would change the Middle East’s
strategic balance in favour of the US and Israel.
If this cannot be accomplished, however, then crippling Syria to
effectively prevent it from providing Iran any form of diplomatic,
political, economic, and military support in the face of common threats
has been a primary objective. Preventing any continued cooperation
between the two republics has been a strategic goal. This includes
preventing the Iran-Iraq-Syria energy terminal from being built and
ending the military pact between the two partners.
All Options are Aimed at Neutralizing Syria
Regime change in Damascus is not the only or main way for the US and
its allies to prevent Syria from standing with Iran. Destabilizing Syria
and neutralizing it as a failed and divided state is the key. Sectarian
fighting is not a haphazard outcome of the instability in Syria, but an
assisted project that the US and its allies have steadily fomented with
a clear intent to balkanize the Syrian Arab Republic. Regionally,
Israel above all other states has a major stake in securing this
outcome. The Israelis actually have several publicly available
documents, including the Yinon Plan, which outline that the destruction
of Syria into a series of smaller sectarian states is one of their
strategic objectives. So do American military planners.
Like Iraq next door, Syria does not need to be formally divided. For
all intents and purposes, the country can be divided like Lebanon was
alongside various fiefdoms and stretches of territory controlled by
different groups during the Lebanese Civil War. The goal is to
disqualify Syria as an external player.
Since 2006 and the Israeli defeat in Lebanon in that year there was
renewed focus on the strategic alliance between Iran and Syria. Both
countries have been very resilient in the face of US designs in their
region. Together both have been key players for influencing events in
the Middle East, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
Their strategic alliance has undoubtedly played an important role in
shaping the geo-political landscape in the Middle East. Although critics
of Damascus say it has done very little in regard to substantial action
against the Israelis, the Syrians have been the partners within this
alliance that have carried the greatest weight in regards to facing
Israel; it has been through Syria that Hezbollah and the Palestinians
have been provided havens, logistics, and their initial strategic depth
against Israel.
From the beginning the foreign-supported external opposition leaders
made their foreign policy clear, which can strongly be argued was a
reflection of the interests they served. The anti-government forces and
their leaders even declared that they will realign Syria against Iran;
in doing so they used sectarian language about returning to their
“natural orbit with the Sunni Arabs.” This is a move that is clearly in
favour of the US and Israel alike. Breaking the axis between Damascus
and Tehran has also been a major goal of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the
Arab petro-sheikhdoms since the 1980s as part of a design to isolate
Iran during the Iraq-Iran War. [2] Moreover, the sectarian language
being used is part of a construct; it is not a reflection of reality,
but a reflection of Orientalist conjecture and desires that falsely
stipulate that Muslims who perceive themselves as being Shia or Sunni
are inherently at odds with one another as enemies.
Among the prostrating Syrian opposition leaders who would execute the
strategic goals of the US has been Burhan Ghalioun, the former
president of the Istanbul-based and foreign-sponsored Syrian National
Council, who told the
Wall Street Journal in 2011 that Damascus
would end its strategic alliance with Iran and end its support for
Hezbollah and the Palestinians as soon as anti-government forces took
over Syria. [3] These foreign-sponsored opposition figures have also
served to validate, in one way or another, the broader narratives that
claim Sunnis and Shiites hate one another. In synchronization the
mainstream media in the countries working for regime change in Damascus,
such as the US and France, have consistently advertized that the regime
in Syria is an Alawite regime that is allied to Iran, because the
Alawites are an offshoot of Shiism. This too is untrue, because Syria
and Iran do not share a common ideology; both countries are aligned,
because of a common threat and shared political and strategic
objectives. Nor is Syria run by an Alawite regime; the government’s
composure reflects Syrian society’s ethnic and religious diversity.
Israel’s Stake in Syria
Syria is all about Iran for Israel.
As if Tel Aviv
has nothing to do whatsoever with the events inside Syria, Israeli
commentators and analysts are now publicly insisting that Israel needs
to deal with Iran by intervening inside Syria. Israel’s involvement in
Syria, alongside the US and NATO, crystallized in 2012. It was clear
that Israel was working in a conglomerate comprised of the US, Britain,
France, Turkey, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon’s minority
March 14 Alliance, and the NATO-supported usurpers that have taken over
and wrecked the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Although it should be read with caution, it is worth noting the
release of the hacked correspondence of Strategic Forecast
Incorporated’s Reva Bhalla to her boss, George Friedman, about a
December 2011 meeting in the Pentagon between herself (representing
Stratfor), US, French, and British officials about Syria. [4] The
Stratfor correspondence claimed that the US and its allies had sent in
their military special forces to destabilize Syria in 2011 and that
there actually were not many Syrian anti-government forces on the ground
or, as Bhalla writes, “there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army to
train.” [5]
The Daily Star, which is owned by Lebanon’s Hariri
family which has been involved in the regime change operations against
Syria, soon after reported that thirteen undercover French officers were
caught by the Syrians conducting operations inside Homs. [6] Instead of
a categorical no to the information about the captured French officers,
the French Foreign Ministry’s response to the public was that it could
not confirm anything, which can be analyzed as an omission of guilt. [7]
Days earlier, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar station revealed that Israeli-made
weapons and supplies, ranging from grenades and night binoculars to
communication devices, were captured alongside Qatari agents inside the
insurgent stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs towards the end of April and
start of March. [8] An unnamed US official would later confirm in July
2012 that the Mossad was working alongside the CIA in Syria. [9] Just a
month earlier, in June, the Israeli government began publicly demanding
that a military intervention be launched into Syria, presumably by the
US and the conglomerate of governments working with Israel to
destabilize Syria. [10]
The Israeli media has even begun to casually report that Israeli
citizens, albeit one has been identified as an Israeli Arab (meaning a
Palestinian with Israeli citizenship), have entered Syria to fight
against the Syrian Army. [11] Normally any Israelis, specifically those
that are non-Jewish Arabs, which enter Lebanon or/and Syria are
condemned or prosecuted by Israeli authorities and Israeli news reports
focus on this aspect of the story. Yet, it has not been so in this case.
It should also be mentioned that the Palestinian opponents of Israel
living inside Syria are also being targeted, just as the Palestinians
living in Iraq were targeted after the US and UK invaded in 2003.
Syria and the Objective of Making Iran Stand Alone
The journalist Rafael D. Frankel wrote a revealing article for the
Washington Quarterly
that illustrates what US policymakers and their partners think about in
Syria. In his article Frankel argued that because of the so-called Arab
Spring that an attack on Iran by the US and Israel would no longer
trigger a coordinated regional response from Iran and its allies. [12]
Frankel argued that because of the events inside Syria an opportunity
has been created for the US and Israel to attack Iran without igniting a
regional war that would involve Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. [13]
Frankel’s line of thinking was not lost on circles in either NATO or
Israel. In reality his line of thinking springs forth from the views and
plans of these very circles. As a psychological enforcement of their
ideas, his text actually found its way to NATO Headquarters in Brussels
in 2012 for reading material. While the latter, Israel, released its own
intelligence report about the subject.
According to the Israeli newspaper
Maariv, the intelligence
report by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has concluded that Syria
and Hezbollah will no longer be able to open a second front against
Israel should it go to war with Iran. [14] During the Israeli report’s
release, one senior Israeli official was quoted as saying “Iran’s
ability to harm Israel in response to an attack on our part declined
dramatically.”[15]
Many news wires, papers, and writers with hostile positions towards both Syria and Iran, such as
The Daily Telegraph,
immediately replicated the Israeli report’s findings about Iran and its
regional allies. Two of the first people to reproduce the findings of
the Israel report, Robert Tait (writing from the Gaza Strip) and Damien
McElroy (who was expelled from Libya in 2011 by that country’s
authorities during the war with NATO), summarize how significant the
findings of the report are by effectively outlining how Iran’s key
allies in the Levant have all been neutralized. [16]
The Israeli report has triumphantly declared that Syria has turned
within and is too busy to join ranks with its strategic ally Iran
against Tel Aviv in a future war. [17] The ramifications of the Syrian
crisis have also placed Iran’s Lebanese allies, particularly Hezbollah,
in an unsteady position where their supply lines are under threat and
they have been politically damaged through their support of Damascus. If
anyone in Lebanon should side with Iran in a future war the Israelis
have said that they will invade through massive military operations on
the ground. [18]
The new Egyptian government’s role in aiding US objectives under
President Morsi also becomes clear with what the Israeli report says
about his supportive role: “The foreign ministry report also predicted
that Egypt would stop Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, from
helping Iran by launching rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.” [19] This
adds credence to the view that Morsi was allowed by the US and Israel
to broker a peace between the Gaza Strip and Tel Aviv, which would
prevent the Palestinians there from standing with Iran during a war. In
other words the Egyptian truce was setup to bind the hands of Hamas. The
recent announcements about moves by Morsi’s government to engage
Hezbollah politically can also be scrutinized as an extension of the
same strategy applied in Gaza, but in this case for unbinding Iran from
its Lebanese allies. [20]
There is also clamouring for steps to be taken to de-link Hezbollah,
and by extension Iran, from its Christian allies in Lebanon. The German
Marshall Fund showcased a text essentially saying that the Lebanese
Christians that are allies to Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran need to be
presented with an alternative political narrative to replace the one
where they believe that Iran will ultimately run the Middle East as a
great power. [21] This too is tied to further eroding Iran’s alliance
system.
Mission Accomplished?
The conflict in Syria is not merely an Israeli affair. The slow
bleeding of Syria has other interested parties that want to smash the
country and its society into pieces. The US is foremost among these
interested parties, followed by the Arab dictators of the
petro-sheikhdoms. NATO has also always been covertly involved.
NATO’s involvement in Syria is part of the US strategy of using the
military alliance to dominate the Middle East. This is why it was
decided to establish a component of the missile shield in Turkey. This
is also the reason that Patriot missiles are being deployed to the
Turkish border with Syria. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and
NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue are components of these plans too.
Additionally, Turkey has ended its veto against the further integration
of Israel into NATO. [22]
NATO has been reorienting itself towards asymmetrical warfare and
greater emphasis is now being put on intelligence operations. NATO
strategists have increasingly been studying the Kurds, Iraq, Hezbollah,
Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians. In the scenario of an all-out war,
NATO has been preparing itself for overt military roles in both Syria
and Iran.
Iraq is being destabilized further too. While Iran’s allies in
Damascus have been weighed down, its allies in Baghdad have not. After
Syria, the same conglomerate of countries working against Damascus will
turn their attention to Iraq. They have already started working to
galvanize Iraq further on the basis of its sectarian and political fault
lines. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are playing prominent roles in
this objective. What is becoming manifest is that the differences
between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims that Washington has cultivated
since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 are now been augmented
by Kurdish sectarianism.
It appears that many in the Israeli political establishment now
believe that they have succeeded in breaking the Resistance Bloc.
Whether they are correct or incorrect is a matter of debate. Syria still
stands; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (which was by far the most active
Palestinian group fighting Israel from Gaza in 2012) and other
Palestinians will side with Iran even if Hamas will have its hands tied
by Egypt; there are still Tehran’s allies in Iraq; and Syria is not the
only supply line for Iran to arm its ally Hezbollah. What is also very
clear is that the siege against Syria is a front in the covert
multi-dimensional war against Iran. This alone should make people
reconsider the statements of US officials and their allies about having
concerns for the Syrian people merely on the basis of humanitarianism
and democracy.
NOTES
[1] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, “Obama’s Secret Letter to Tehran: Is the
War against Iran On Hold? ‘The Road to Tehran Goes through Damascus,’”
Global Research, January 20, 2012.
[2] Jubin M. Goodarzi,
Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp.217-228.
[3] Nour Malas and Jay Solomon, “Syria Would Cut Iran Military Tie, Opposition Head Says,”
Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2011.
[4] WikiLeaks, “Re: INSIGHT – military intervention in Syria, post
withdrawal status of forces,” October 19, 2012:
<http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/209688_re-insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html>.
[5]
Ibid.
[6] Lauren Williams, “13 French officers being held in Syria,”
The Daily Star, March 5, 2012.
[7]
Ibid.
[8] Israa Al-Fass, “Mossad, Blackwater, CIA Led Operations in Homs,” trans. Sara Taha Moughnieh,
Al-Manar, March 3, 2012.
[9] David Ignatius, “Looking for a Syrian endgame,”
The Washington Post, July 18, 2012.
[10] Dan Williams, “Israel accuses Syria of genocide, urges intervention,” Andrew Heavens ed.,
Reuters, June 10, 2012.
[11] Hassan Shaalan, “Israeli fighting Assad ‘can’t go home,’”
Yedioth Ahronoth, January 3, 2013.
[12] Rafael D. Frankel, “Keeping Hamas and Hezbollah Out of a War with Iran,”
Washington Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 4 (Fall 2012): pp.53-65.
[13]
Ibid.
[14] “Weakened Syria unlikely to join Iran in war against Israel: report,”
The Daily Star, January 4, 2013.
[15]
Ibid.
[16] Damien McElroy and Robert Tait, “Syria ‘would not join Iran in war against Israel,’”
The Daily Telegraph, January 3, 2013.
[17] “Weakened Syria,”
The Daily Star,
op. cit.
[18] “Syria and Hezbollah won’t join the fight if Israel strikes Iran, top-level report predicts,”
Times of Israel, January 3, 2013.
[19] McElroy and Tait, “Syria would not,”
op. cit.
[20] Lauren Williams, “New Egypt warms up to Hezbollah: ambassador,”
The Daily Star, December 29, 2011.
[21] Hassan Mneimneh, “Lebanon ― The Christians of Hezbollah: A Foray into a Disconnected Political Narrative,”
The German Marshall Fund of the United States, November 16, 2012.
[22] Hilary Leila Krieger, “Israel to join NATO activities amidst Turkey tension,”
Jerusalem Post,
December 23, 2012; Jonathon Burch and Gulsen Solaker, “Turkey lifts
objection to NATO cooperation with Israel,” Mark Heinrich ed.,
Reuters, December 24, 2012; “Turkey: Israel’s participation in NATO not related to Patriots,”
Today’s Zaman, December 28, 2012.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-syria-endgame-strategic-stage-in-the-pentagons-covert-war-on-iran/5317907
Entführung in Algerien: 25 Geiseln laut Medien befreit, 34 getötet
Der
hochdekorierte General Bruno Dary (61; er ist u.a. Kommandeur der
Ehrenlegion) war von 2007 bis Juni 2012 Militärgouverneur von Paris. Er
hat die Großdemonstration am Sonntag mit organisiert. Die offiziellen
Zahlenangaben widerlegt er in 
Nato beginnt mit Patriot-Stationierung in Türkei
